Tarnished Penn State football legend Joe Paterno and other top school officials covered up Jerry Sandusky’s child sex abuse for 14 years — enabling the perv to continue preying on kids, a blistering report charged yesterday.

“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State,” said former FBI Director Louis Freeh, whose team conducted an eight-month probe.

“The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”

Freeh — hired by Penn State in November to get to the bottom of one of the most sordid scandals in the history of college sports — released the damning 267-page report yesterday.

It blasted Paterno — the Hall of Fame coach who died in January at age 85 of lung cancer after being fired over his handling of the scandal — along with then-university President Graham Spanier, VP Gary Schultz and athletic director Timothy Curley, all of whom were fired last fall.

“These men concealed Sandusky’s activities from the Board of Trustees, the university community and authorities,” the report said. “They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky’s victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being, especially by not attempting to determine the identity of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001.”

In that incident, graduate assistant football coach Mike McQueary saw a naked Sandusky apparently sodomizing a boy in a locker-room shower and told Paterno.

The report said Paterno and the others had known about the allegations surrounding Sandusky since 1998, when the mother of a boy complained the assistant coach had showered with him

But the once-fabled coach did nothing in either case — except telling Sandusky about the 2001 allegation, which the report said further endangered the victim.

For example, Paterno told a grand jury in 2011 that he was unaware of any complaints about Sandusky before McQueary saw him molesting the boy in the shower in 2001.

But Freeh’s team found that Curley and Schultz had exchanged e-mails shortly after the 1998 incident showing Paterno knew about the charge.

One, with the subject line “Joe Paterno,” read: “I have touched base with the coach. Keep us posted.”

Another read: “Anything new in this department? Coach is anxious to know where it stands.”

Paterno was asked by the grand jury if he discussed the McQueary report with officials beyond Curley.

“No, because I figured that Tim would handle it appropriately . . .I thought he would look into it and handle it appropriately,” Paterno said.

But Curley and Schultz, who had decided to take the 2001 case to child-welfare authorities, exchanged e-mails that said Paterno put the kibosh on their plan.

“After giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe yesterday — I am uncomfortable with what we agreed were the next steps,” Curley wrote Schulz.

The report charged, “These individuals . . . empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted and unsupervised access to the university’s facilities. That continued access provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims.’’

Paterno’s son Jay defended his dad.

“Very often the people closest to someone like this [Sandusky] are the ones that miss it. We aren’t the only ones who missed it . . . Every one of us wishes that we would have seen something or caught something that would have done something about it,” he told ESPN.

But the foster mother of a boy identified at trial only as Victim 10 lashed out at the late coach.

“It’s just sick. This all could have been avoided. I thought he would be more like the honest Joe, the good guy,” she told Philly.com

The report could lead to NCAA sanctions up to and including imposing the “death penalty” — banning football for a year or more.

The US Department of Education also is examining whether the school violated the Clery Act, which requires reporting of certain crimes on campus.

Reaction was mixed on campus — where a student-center television was quickly switched to another channel when Freeh’s press conference began.

Malcolm Moran, director of Penn State’s John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, called the Freeh report “the latest shock to the system” at the still-polarized campus, where many continue to revere Paterno.

Courtney Lennartz, president of the student body, said, “It is sad to think we put so much trust into these men, it is tough to deal with.”

Asked if the statue of Paterno on campus should be taken down, Vincenzo Lizza, president of Penn State’s InterFraternity Council, said, “It’s tough to know where I stand on whether to take it down.”

The scandal has not hurt donations. Penn State said 190,000 donors — 6,000 more than last year — contributed more than $200 million.

Sandusky is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of 45 criminal counts for abusing 10 boys.

Curley and Schultz are awaiting trial on charges of lying to a grand jury and failing to report abuse.